Ex-Underboss Offers Primer on Mob Life

By NOAH ROSENBERG

Published: March 21, 2012

It was summer 1999, and a meeting between the leadership of the Bonanno and Colombo crime families was under way in an apartment off Third Avenue, in Fort Hamilton, Brooklyn.

But something was amiss: the seat that should have been taken by William Cutolo Sr., a Colombo underboss, was empty, a former Bonanno underboss testified on Tuesday.

The absence was noted, and then cryptically explained by another Colombo mobster: ''You can't take in this life what's not yours,'' the witness, Salvatore Vitale, recalled the man as saying.

Mr. Vitale, then the underboss of the Bonanno crime family, said he immediately knew what that meant.

''I realized then that Wild Bill was dead,'' said Mr. Vitale, invoking the nickname of Mr. Cutolo, one of six people whose killings are at the heart of the prosecution of Thomas Gioeli, who prosecutors believe is a former acting boss of the Colombo crime family, and Dino Saracino, who they allege was one of his hit men. The trial of the two men, charged with murder and racketeering, began on Monday.

Mr. Vitale, once known as Good Looking Sal, is admittedly no innocent bystander, nor is he a stranger to the witness stand. Following his arrest in 2003, he quickly began working with the authorities, and his testimony on Tuesday was the seventh time he had taken the stand in Federal District Court in Brooklyn on behalf of the government.

Currently under witness protection, Mr. Vitale has been credited by prosecutors with identifying more than 500 organized crime members and associates. Dozens of them, including Joseph C. Massino, a former Bonanno boss and Mr. Vitale's brother-in-law, have been imprisoned as a result.

Most of Mr. Vitale's testimony, under questioning by Christina M. Posa, an assistant United States attorney, amounted to a colorful primer on mob life, as he spoke casually of his nearly 30-year association with the Bonanno family.

At one point, Mr. Vitale was invited off the witness stand to outline the organizational structure of a typical crime family, presented on a large poster board as if it were a boardroom breakdown of a white-collar company.

But Mr. Vitale spoke of a criminal hierarchy: the robberies, the loan-sharking, the ''hijacking'' of trucks carrying ''tuna fish, lobster, clothes,'' and the homicides.

He offered what amounted to a list of commandments for anyone hoping to succeed and survive in organized crime.

''The dos are, 'Do what you're told, and you'll be fine,' '' he said, underscoring the vital importance of the chain of command in the Bonanno and other crime families.

The chain of command, he emphasized, was essential, especially when murder was involved.

''We're all supposed to be tough guys, we're all supposed to be shooters,'' he said. ''But you have to get permission to do something like that.''

Mr. Cutolo disappeared on May 26, 1999; Alphonse Persico, then the boss of the Colombo family, and John DeRoss have been convicted in the killing.

In Mr. Vitale's four hours on the stand, which included a cross-examination by Carl J. Herman, a lawyer for Mr. Gioeli, he only began to establish Mr. Gioeli's connection to organized crime.

Mr. Vitale told the court that he had first met Mr. Gioeli, also known as Tommy Shots, when Joel Cacace Sr. -- whom prosecutors have called a consigliere, or top mob adviser in the Colombo family -- said he wanted Mr. Gioeli to act as a go-between.

''Joe Waverly,'' Mr. Vitale said, using a nickname for Mr. Cacace, ''had a lot of heat on him -- the F.B.I. was all over him,'' so he wanted Mr. Gioeli to, in a sense, be his public face.

Several meetings between Mr. Vitale and Mr. Gioeli followed. At some of those meetings, in the mid-1990s, Mr. Vitale said, Mr. Gioeli requested the Bonanno family's approval, as was customary, of new members the Colombo family was considering. But at the time, the Colombo family's internal struggle had been raging, and a commission of the top leadership from New York's main crime families had to halt the Colombo family's growth.

''When it's all over the news, all over the newspapers,'' Mr. Vitale said of the Colombo power struggle, ''it's bad for business.''